


Nerites

by Petronia



Series: Hesperides (Citrus-verse) [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Costa del Sol, M/M, Oranges, Post-Season/Series 03, Sailing, color palette fic, not quite a merman AU, references to medical abuse, relatively acceptable forms of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 05:37:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6316729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/pseuds/Petronia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal kissed the accord from Will’s fingers: orange rind and salt water and the taste of skin. He kissed the pulse of Will’s wrist, and watched his eyes change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nerites

**Author's Note:**

> The palette darkartsandcrafts provided was _indigo, poppy orange, acid yellow._ Other colours also feature in the story: I am a maximalist in this respect.

 

They spent the first weeks of February in Marrakech, leaving _Nola_ in dock in Casablanca. Then, returning, they followed the spring warmth to Tangier, and from there sailed to Spain.

Hannibal had learnt to read charts as Will did. What was once empty blue was now positive space -- a cartography of depths and winds and currents -- and with the new way of seeing came a different understanding: that of their leisurely, pebble’s-skip progress not as the skirting of a continent’s margins, but the traversal of its heart. A thalassocratic civilization had risen and fallen and risen again, each successive name eradicated: Phoenicia, Carthage… a forgotten empire of harbours. Málaga, Granada’s ancient pendant; Cartagena, founded by Hasdrubal the Fair; Alicante, the white city... Palermo, too, was among them, which the Phoenicians called _Ziz_ \-- meaning flower.

Half-mirages, these millennia-old ports; in some sense all the same. The fluid heart still lived. Wine-dark blood roaring, reoxygenated, into the Balearic chamber, Gibraltar the rushing valve.

 

*

 

Colours grew brighter, floral and hesperidic. In Ceuta Will bought tangerines, and in Almería an entire basket of bitter oranges, shipped from inland. As the latter could not be eaten fresh Hannibal used them up in desserts: he made tartelettes, compote, Greek-style spoon sweets to accompany ice water and coffee. Such things were simple, even with the boat’s cramped excuse for a galley.

“Waste not, want not,” Will murmured. The bitter oranges had been a mistake, he said; but the scent of them clung to his hands, frequently and for little reason. The oranges had been a mistake, but--

Hannibal kissed the accord from Will’s fingers: orange rind and salt water and the taste of skin. He kissed the pulse of Will’s wrist, and watched his eyes change.

Will’s eyes were most blue when he was lost, to madness or to pleasure. Hannibal had made the discovery, a long time ago, kneeling by his chair as he slipped a needle into the crook of Will’s arm: for under close examination Will’s irises were not indeterminate but variegate, like polished stone, the streaks of amber and ash closer to the centre -- such that when the drug swept like ocean current through his brain, erasing boundaries and memory, the pupils widened and swallowed those colours up.

Had Linnaeus felt such wonder? Had Lyell?

Will remembered something of those sessions, but not -- it was clear enough -- the moments that had preceded them. Only Hannibal knew that he had extended his arm for the needle, trusting, and held Hannibal’s gaze like a lifeline as his pain spilled free.

Hannibal would have gathered him up in his hands, if it had been possible.

He had found it a matter for regret, even at the time, that they could not have shared the memory. It was likely too late to attempt to recover it, and Will would not wish to be reminded.

No matter: Will consented to other methods, now. Each day brought new avenues of investigation, and more splendid experiments.

 

*

 

For instance:

A rented room with a private rooftop patio, in sleepy, rose-madder Valencia. Flagstone flooring, cool to bare feet. Billowing white bed and straw-blond wine on a little yellow side table.

Will Graham _loved_ having Hannibal inside him. That was delightful, in and of itself; but what had arrested Hannibal about the discovery was that it had seemed to exceed Will’s expectations altogether. It was as if Will had not imagined this intimacy between them and did not know how to defend against it, how to keep hold of himself. Afterward he had wanted space. He had paid stringent attention, the next day, to _Nola_ ’s filtration system, until it was evident that Hannibal would not make him talk about it.

Hannibal had assumed, then, that the experience would not repeat itself. It was not the first time Will had denied them both, on some delicate scruple, what Will himself wanted -- Hannibal knew what he wanted: sometimes Will was disastrously opaque, but at other times Hannibal saw him, felt him, in a way that could not be hubris or illusion, as if they were parts of the same entity. In those moments it was intolerable that Will should choose to deny himself, yet he did, over and over. As if his own happiness had no inherent value.

He had been wrong, and relieved to be wrong: Will had come to him, some nights later when they had both had a few glasses of wine, and asked. Not in words, but sweetly, with his body and hands and mouth, such that Hannibal would have given him anything -- everything -- let alone this.

So now, in the room with a view, he was allowed to lay Will on the soft white bed, and touch him inside and out. He could use his fingers and his tongue to pleasure Will, open him up and caress him where he felt most keenly, until Will’s body relaxed and ceased to treat him as an intrusion. Until Will was flushed and damp with sweat and arched in bliss, straining for more of what only Hannibal could give him, his irises bright blue rings around blown pupils.

No one had ever done this for Will. His lovers had been women, considerate and responsive no doubt, but they had not thought to nor had wanted to. No one had ever cared for Will Graham as much or as deeply as Hannibal did; there were people in the world who passed him on the street and did not stop to look, to whom Will meant nothing at all -- the thought of that sent a hot rush of feeling through his chest that he had experienced at intervals for years yet still could not name, indignant and covetous and tender all at once. _Will_.

Will was saying his name, voice gone slow and drugged. “Hannibal.” His hand trailed up Hannibal’s chest.

Hannibal leant into the caress. “Lovely boy,” he murmured in Will’s ear, in lieu of asking for permission. “You’ll be good for me, won’t you? Do you want to see me take you?”

There were sweet spots in Will’s mind, too, sensitive places accessible only when Will was like this. Will’s breath hitched and he curled toward Hannibal, as if at a physical touch.

“Yes,” he said. And struggled up on his elbows, so that he could watch as Hannibal parted his thighs and pulled his hips into his lap. As Hannibal penetrated him, one long hot aching glide, Will’s entrance slick with lubrication and entirely unresisting. He made a sound, at that -- a high hurt sound -- but kept watching even as Hannibal bottomed out and straightened his back and started to move. His eyes were unfocussed, his kiss-bitten mouth slack with lust.

His cock lay flushed and hard along his belly, but he made no move to touch himself. That was for Hannibal, it seemed. And the way his pretty hole gripped Hannibal, tight and fever-hot; and the little lost noises he made, when Hannibal pushed him down and braced himself with an arm to either side of Will’s head and took him fast and hard. All of him was here, pinned by Hannibal, _belonging_.

“Will,” he said, “Will,” _you’re mine,_ he wanted to say, _you’re mine, I love you, no one else can have you._ Crude and childish and easy to dismiss. But it was as if Will heard him anyway -- heard and liked it -- because he cried out and turned his head aside and came untouched in sharp, shuddering spurts, all over his stomach and chest, eyes clenched shut and body locked down hard and tight around Hannibal’s cock. And that -- the sensation of Will’s helpless pleasure -- drove Hannibal over the edge; he ceased to think and set his teeth in Will’s shoulder and came, in a hot savage rush, as deep inside Will as he could.

 

*

 

Afterward he licked at the mark he’d made on Will’s shoulder. One of his canines had broken skin, and blood seeped from the raised welt -- just a little -- a fleeting saline sweetness, there and gone. He drew his fingers through the mess of come and sweat on Will’s stomach and tasted that too. Different flavours, but recognizably Will.

More experiments, he thought. Perhaps mixed into Italian meringue, as a stabilizer for sorbet? The flavouring would have to be tart, to achieve a harmonious composition with the brine note, but not too bitter. There were still oranges left, and he would look for Sicilian lemons. Or…

He dozed, tucked into Will’s side, aware that Will was watching him and comforted by it.

When he woke it was to the scent of rain, and a vision. Will had opened the door to the rooftop patio, and was standing outside, utterly and unselfconsciously nude. His face was upturned, hands loose at his sides. It seemed to Hannibal that his eyes were closed, though the angle was such that he could not read his expression.

The rain was steady, though not heavy, filling the air with a fine mist. Will had been out in it long enough that water dripped from his curls, dark and tangled at his nape, and ran in beaded rivulets down his back.

He seemed elemental, inhuman: a wild godling of some nameless stream or tidal flat.

Hannibal was seized by a sense of disorientation -- a weightlessness, akin to the moment Will had cast them over the cliff, and they had begun to fall. Gravity had seemed to disappear at the very moment it fatally tightened its hold.

Death had come for him, in the numbing cold of the sea, and he had rejected it. Not out of terror, but out of greed -- for wholeness, for love returned. For the singular, perfect moment to go on. In all his contempt of Faust, he had not understood the equal value of the barter.

Perhaps what he assumed to be continuing existence was encompassed in that moment: the lucid dream of a hypoxic brain. But Will had taken him into the water with a promise, as gods make to the mortals they ravish. Will would not let him die alone. He would hold Hannibal close, and nourish him with sweetness until he drowned.

He had not made a sound, but Will turned, meeting his gaze as if in response. After a moment he stepped back into the room and returned to bedside, leaving dark wet footprints on the flagstones. Leant over Hannibal, just as he was, such that tepid rain fell by proxy on Hannibal’s bare skin.

“You’ll catch cold,” Hannibal said, though warmth radiated across the close space between his body and Will’s -- running hot, as always after emotion or exertion. Will smirked.

“You can draw me a bath,” he said, and leant down to kiss Hannibal’s mouth. “It doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere soon.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Nerites may be: 1) the only male Nereid in Greek myth, as such hotly contested between various Olympians and at one point turned into a sea snail; 2) the beautiful and delicious sea snail known in Hawaii as kupe'e, frequently encountered in Etsy jewelry; 3) Hannibal's bullshit title for the drawing he will eventually make of naked wet Will, probably.


End file.
